World View & Market Commentary. Forest first; Trees second. Focused on Real & Knowable facts that filter through the "experts" fluff and media hyperbole. Where we've been, what the future may hold and developing a better way forward.

Friday, July 31, 2009

Allow me to share Point's post with his quick summary of revisions of the WORTHLESS GDP numbers:

Cliff notes version:

Inventories were cut MORE in Q2 by businesses than in Q1, $141.1 vs. $113.9. No green shoots there.

GDP has now *officially* been negative for five of the past six quarters. And Q1 was revised waaaaay lower, even lower than the *advance* estimate we received in late April, -6.4 vs. -6.3, making Q1 of 2009 WORSE than Q4 of 2008 (at -5.4), the opposite of what had been previously assumed. No green shoots there.

For 2008: Q1 was revised sharply lower, to -.7 from .9; Q2 to 1.5 from 2.8, and Q3 to -2.7 from -.5. No green shoots there.

Gross private domestic investment fell for the seventh quarter in a row, the past three quarters seeing declines of 24.2, 50.5 and 20.4 respectively. Residential fixed investments have now been negative for a stunning 14 consecutive quarters, with the past 13 showing double-digit declines. The past three have shown retrenchments of 23.2, 38.2 and 29.3 respectively. No green shoots there.

What has picked up the slack? Why government spending, of course. This was most pronounced in Q2 2009. Gov't consumption and expenditures rose 5.6. At the Federal level, spending rose a whopping 10.9 in Q2, national defense jumped 13.3 (more wars anyone?), nondefense jumped 6.0 while state and local government spending climbed 2.4. Yes, bankrupt governments across the land INCREASED spending in the prior quarter. That's smart. You can call these numbers green shoots if you are a corporate-fascist-state admirer; that's your prerogative, Bobby Brown.

So there you have it. Once again, down is the new up.

Since both Point and myself are so tired of having to write about their revisions instead of the economy, I’m going to repost Chris Martenson’s Chapter 16 of his Crash Course . Chris’s video is simply an EXCELLENT summation of the distortions which are now even MORE distorted than when he made this video…

As Davos, at Chris Martenson’s site, says, “What an Enron farse!” On that I agree completely.

I’ll repeat what I said in the previous post: The BEA, the BLS, in fact ALL government reports are suspect. All reporting of government statistics should be scrapped. The Fed should be abolished, The central banks and bankers should be removed – as in gone, a new money system should be put in place, there should be a Constitutional Amendment dictating the SEPARATION OF CORPORATIONS AND THEIR MONEY FROM STATE, and finally, there should be a new government agency responsible for collecting and reporting economic statistics and that agency should have a mandate to develop data collection methods that cannot be changed over time and there should also be a mandate to release RAW DATA with every report, there should be absolute transparency in that all the calculations and all collection methods should be easily viewable by anyone. Oh, and NO ONE, not even the President should have access to the information before the public!